10.11.08

Had a great time yesterday at a synth building workshop in East London hosted by Tom Bugs. We built little one board synths with ten knobs, three oscillators, overdrive, line out, onboard speakers, touch points. Flickr set here. What I learned:
1. Soldering now holds no fear. Get a £5 soldering iron with a pointy tip, a cleaning pad, some skinny solder and some wire snippers. It's fine.
2. Well-designed kits are really easy to make. Tom's kit was perfect - well laid out, nice clear circuit board, great instructions (he should be selling the kits 'soon'). The quickest maker did it in about 3 hours, and that was slow and steady... (The Thingamakit is another really well done kit which is available now)
3. Musical accompaniment is important. We were lucky enough to have the Sun Ra Arkestra soundchecking next door.
4. Good lighting is also important. Soldering by candlelight = atmospheric, but not easy.
5. Tom Bugs has only been building electronics for five years - starting out with circuit bending. He's now at the point where he has an assitant to do the boring bits. He's a bit down on veroboard. He uses Eagle to design circuit boards, which are mass-produced in China. His next thing: modules for Frac-rac modular synths.

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19.4.08

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If you're going to do noise, do it properly

Love this video from Tom Bugs of Bug Brand, demoing the latest £100 Weevil 08, with a mini Kaoss Pad. The only problem with Tom's stuff is that it's impossible to buy - his lastest batch of Weevils sold out within hours. Previously: Tom Bugs in his workshop. (Via Matrix)

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23.9.08

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Building a Bleep Labs Thingamakit

Dr Bleep was kind enough to send me a Thingamakit - his build-it-yourself light cell powered noise synth (it's the big brother of the Thingamagoop). The box arrived a couple of months ago and sat in the corner, mocking me. Fear of soldering is a terrible thing, and easily cured by a pair of Velleman crawling micro bugs - £10 from Maplin, 1 hour each to solder together, two happy kids, two parents with soldering fume headaches. So far, the Thingamakit is a joy (being assembled next to an open window and a desk fan). Every component is labelled, the manual is clear and helpful, with useful things like a big colour photo of how the populated board should look. The circuit board is was white until I gunked it with solder flux. Best of all, it worked first time. The kit comes complete with an unfinished 1790NS case and a drilling guide, but perhaps something more interesting will turn up.
Anyway, what should I build next?

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8.5.08

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Squarewave Parade: Fine boutique gear you can actually buy

I'm always talking about my name and citysake Tom Bugs, but his cool stuff always sells out within hours of being announced. Meanwhile, Squarewave Parade have a shop full of cool-looking things, like the Safeplace - a $59 handmade metal shaker with a contact mic inside it and a tone control on the outside, the Mole - a $229 filter based on the MS20, Downgrade - an analog pseudo bit reducer and Parade - a $44 kit with a circuit board and various pots, which is six squarewave oscillators to tweak together.

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23.11.07

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20 non-boring Christmas gifts for musicians which cost less than £100

See also: 11 crazy expensive Christmas gifts for musicians, and my 2005 Gift Guide, which still stands up OK.
1. TapeOp Magazine The coolest magazine about recording and excessively expensive music gear is now available free in the US, UK and Europe. Free
2. Akai E2 Headrush The awesome looper/delay pedal used by KT Tunstall in this ace clip (and by countless people in other YouTube clips) £95 UK|$199 US
3. Lap Steel My wife bought me a lap steel for my birthday this year, and it's awesome. They're cheap, easy to play and cool-sounding. Make sure it comes with a tone bar, or they won't be able to play it on Xmas day. £50-90 from eBay UK|$100+ from eBay US.
4. Spooky glass hand that plays Chopin. $16.95
5. Pocket Pod Powerful little headphone amp and effects box with sounds 'borrowed' from vintage gear. £65 UK|$130 US.
6. Oliver Sachs: Musicophilia Amazing book about how people become obsessed by music, which I wrote about here. Amazon UK|Amazon US
7. Something from BugBrand Tom Bugs (who I wrote about here) makes beautiful little noise boxes in his Bristol lab. He doesn't have much in stock at the moment, but it's worth checking back. £7 - £130
8. A print by James Joyce You can't buy any of his excellent music gear paintings but there's much to love in his shop. £75 and up.
9. Vox Amplug Tiny headphone amp which plugs directly into your guitar and looks like a teeny vintage amp. I'd buy the AC30 flavour. $40 US|£30 UK
10. Something from Liam Devowski Liam does awesome illustrations and graffiti of synths. Perhaps if you ask him nicely, he'll sell you something! $POA. Similarly Dan McPharlin makes incredible tiny cardboard synths, and takes commissions.
11. Artec Big Dots Most guitar tuners are incredibly boring, but this one, which looks like the floor of a '70s nightclub, will make any guitarist happy. £40 UK|$70 US
12. Hello Kitty guitar A custom Squier strat in black or in pink, it's not quite as cool as the Japanese original by Fernandes, but still fine. $150 US|£134 UK
13. Moog-inspired music Any of the CDs on this list would make any geek happy. Particularly 'Switched on Nashville'... Amazon US|UK
14. Vintage microphones Vintage microphones are surprisingly cheap (plenty go for well under £50) if a bit unhygenic. They're easy to buy: if they look cool, they are cool. Even if they don't sound so great, they're nice to have around. Avoid modern 'retro' Elvis microphones.Vintage mics from eBay UK|eBay US
15. Something from Etsy There are plenty of great homemade/one-off crafty gifts for music geeks at Etsy. Try some of these keywords: synth, Moog, boom box, cassette, and 83 pages of guitars.
16. Audio Damage Effects If the person you're buying for makes music on a computer, one of these will surprise and delight them. I'd recommend Dr Device, Replicant or Phase Two, but buy the one which you like the look of. $29-$49
17. Casio DG20 MIDI guitar Classic '80s techno kitsch revived by this Flight of the Conchords clip. Because the world is crazy, these actually go for up to £300... eBay UK|eBay US Oh, yes, there's also the Flight of the Conchords DVD: UK|US
18. Korg Mini Kaoss Pad Touch pad DJ effects box for glitchy electronic fun $199 US|£95 UK
19. Nanoloop 2.2 Is a cult homemade cartridge which turns the Nintendo Gameboy Advance (or DS) into an 8 channel synth and sequencer. GBAs now cost next to nothing on eBay. €65
20. Build your own guitar kit Not so much a present as a sentence to a January of tinkering and painting. £54 from Thomann. Alternatively, a generous Warmoth gift certificate would satisfy a more serious fiddler.

Dear reader, what do you want for Christmas. Leave an anonymous note in the comments, and maybe a loved one will be inspired...

Labels: xmas2007

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10.4.06

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A Milan boutique for boutique music gear

Sound Metak is a fantastically cool-looking shop in Milan, selling an esoteric collection of guitars, amps and effects. I found it via Tom Bugs, the Bristolian instrument maker who has build stuff for the shop and has just revealed his ace-looking JoyWeevil joystick-controlled sound box.

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6.2.06

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Monday Linkdump

1) Carver Doug's endlessly entertaining crazy carved guitars: Dragons, babes, and, er, the wrong-diddly-wrong Wancaster. (Thanks, Jasse and everyone else)
2) Missing the Packrat cartoons that started out on Music Thing, moved to Keyboard magazine and are no more? Here is the latest installment. (Caution - contains linguistic references that may confuse British viewers)
3) Lyle, who plays guitar with Beck, has this cool guitar (scroll down a bit) with a built in Kaoss Pad! (Thanks, Joe)
4) Some crazy robotic drumming from The Apollo Program, who also do Robotic Guitars. (Thanks, Michael)
5) Huge and alarming looking Tube Synth from Pinky, creator of many other alarming synths. (Thanks, Schism)
6) My own news: I found a Waldorf Pulse very cheap on eBay, and used it on a remix.
7) Got a Korg Microkorg and a Mac? Now you can get an OSX Editor. (Thanks Spod)
8) $167 box will train your ears, making you a better musician.
9) DJ Sniff has built a great homemade looping/sampling/DJing setup: Hardware, software, video demo [QT].
10) The Sonic Post is a very cool-looking sound installation from Tom Bugs with a touch-plate interface, on display in London until 17th March.

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9.11.04

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Ebay of the day: BugBrand Punch Weevil

The BugBrand Punch Weevil is a fantastic-looking handmade synth, built in Bristol by musician Tom Bugs. The most interesting thing feature is the twelve Body Contact Points on the front of the cigar box. They're brass screws which you touch to make a circuit through your fingers for extra weird bloopiness. The Weevil is powered by a 9v battery and it sounds bonkers, obviously (if you can't afford a synthi then this will make all the squawking, blooping noises you'll ever need). He's only made two other Punch Weevils like this one, so your mates definitely won't have one. Bidding starts at just £95, and he's also selling a bigger, uglier Mecha-Weevil here.

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